CounterPunch

History

CounterPunch began as a newsletter, established in 1994 by the Washington, D.C.–based investigative reporter Ken Silverstein.

Silverstein was soon joined by Alexander Cockburn and then Jeffrey St. Clair, who became the publication's editors in 1996 when Silverstein left.

In 2007, Cockburn and St. Clair wrote that in founding CounterPunch they had "wanted it to be the best muckraking newsletter in the country", and cited as inspiration such pamphleteers as Edward Abbey, Peter Maurin, and Ammon Hennacy, as well as the socialist/populist newspaper Appeal to Reason (1895–1922). When Alexander Cockburn died in 2012 at the age of 71, environmental journalist Joshua Frank became managing editor and Jeffrey St. Clair became editor-in-chief of CounterPunch.

Reception

In 2003, The Observer described the CounterPunch website as "one of the most popular political sources in America, with a keen following in Washington". Other sources have variously described CounterPunch as "left-wing", "far-left", "extreme", a "political newsletter", and a "muckraking newsletter".

Controversies

The "Alice Donovan affair"

During the 2016 presidential election, CounterPunch published a piece attributed to Alice Donovan, who purported to be a freelance writer but US intelligence officials alleged to be a pseudonymous employee of the Russian government. Donovan was tracked by the FBI for nine months, as a suspected fictitious persona created by the GRU. In late November 2017, after CounterPunch had published several more pieces by Donovan, The Washington Post contacted Jeffrey St. Clair about her. The co-editor said that Donovan's pitches did not stand out among the pitches that CounterPunch received daily and began making inquiries. St. Clair asked Donovan to substantiate her identity by sending a photo of her driver’s license but she did not.

On the same day The Washington Post article about Donovan was published, St. Clair and Frank published a piece stating that CounterPunch only ran one article by Alice Donovan during the 2016 election, which was on cyber-breaches of medical databases. Donovan was also exposed by the newsletter as a serial plagiarizer. CounterPunch removed all of the articles from their site.

In a January 2018 follow-up article, St. Clair and Frank exposed a network of alleged trolls that operated a site called Inside Syria Media Center, promoting a pro-Bashar al-Assad and pro-Russian view of the Syrian Civil War. St. Clair and Frank speculated that the website was connected to the same network of trolls as Alice Donovan, which was later confirmed by the Atlantic Council and other researchers.

On 8 June 2016, "Alice Donovan",

and other Russian-controlled fake American personas began promoting the DCLeaks website on Facebook.

''PropOrNot'' accusations

In 2016, CounterPunch appeared in a PropOrNot list of websites in which it was described as a Russian propaganda outlet. Writing in the New Yorker, Adrian Chen described the list as a mess and CounterPunch as a "respected left-leaning" publication.

Antisemitism

In reports covering examples of left-wing antisemitism, Counterpunch has been criticized for publishing articles written by white nationalists and Holocaust deniers such as Israel Shamir, Paul Craig Roberts, and Gilad Atzmon in its criticism of Israel.

References

References

1. Blumenthal, Ralph. (May 12, 2006). "Army Acts to Curb Abuses of Injured Recruits". [[The New York Times]].
2. Foer, Franklin. (2002-04-15). "The Devil You Know".
3. "FAQs". CounterPunch.org.
4. "About".
5. "Counterpunch is the brainchild of Ken Silverstein, a former AP reporter in Rio de Janeiro." ''[[Lies of Our Times]]'', vols 4–5 (1993), p. 26.
6. Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair, ''Five Days that Shook the World: Seattle and Beyond'' (London and New York: Verso, 2000), p. 151; Alexander Cockburn, Ken Silverstein, ''Washington Babylon'' (London and New York: Verso, 1996), p. 302.
7. Cockburn, Alexander, and Jeffrey St. Clair, ''End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate'' (Petrolia, California, and Oakland, California: CounterPunch and AK Press, 2007), pp. 2, 44.
8. Cockburn and St. Clair (2007), ''End Times'', p. 383.
9. Nichols, John. (July 21, 2012). "Alexander Cockburn and the Radical Power of the Word".
10. [http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/blog/1645/an_award-winning_year/ An Award-Winning Year, The Investigative Fund]. Retrieved July 24, 2016 {{Webarchive. link. (November 30, 2016)
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16. (December 25, 2017). "Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options". Washington Post.
17. DiResta, Renée. (September 20, 2020). "The Supply of Disinformation Will Soon Be Infinite".
18. St. Clair, Jeffrey. (December 25, 2017). "Go Ask Alice: the Curious Case of 'Alice Donovan'". CounterPunch.
19. O'Sullivan, Donie. (August 23, 2018). "Facebook removes Syrian war page it believes is linked to Russian intel, Twitter keeps it online".
20. St. Clair, Jeffrey. (January 5, 2018). "Ghosts in the Propaganda Machine". CounterPunch.
21. Bump, Philip. (July 13, 2018). "Timeline: How Russian agents allegedly hacked the DNC and Clinton's campaign". [[The Washington Post]].
22. Chen, Adrian. (December 1, 2016). "The Propaganda About Russian Propaganda".
23. Sunshine, Spencer. (2019). "Looking Left at Antisemitism". Journal of Social Justice.
24. (2019). "Antisemitism and the Left: Confronting an Invisible Racism". Journal of Social Justice.
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